The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “I suspect this might be flattering if it weren’t so terribly awkward,” Mocca murmured from behind a bemused smirk. If Sheffu heard him, though, he paid him no heed.

  Lenk pulled at his arm. “Let go.”

  Sheffu narrowed his eyes. “Will you at least listen? Will you at least hear what must be—”

  Whatever it was that must be heard was drowned out in the clanging sound of a silver serving tray being smashed against the back of a veil-wrapped head. Sheffu’s grip went limp, along with the rest of him, as he slumped to the floor with a groan. A slender figure wrapped in smelly black garb stood over him, a tray in her hand and a grin on her face as she pulled off her burlap mask.

  “I swear, every time we do that, I never think it’s going to work,” Kataria chuckled. “Then bwong! Down they go.” Her mirth dimmed—but didn’t die—as she looked up at Lenk, who stared back at her, shocked. “What?”

  “The hell did you do that for?” he demanded, pointing at Sheffu’s body.

  “Do what?” she asked. “He was grabbing you! I thought he was a guard.”

  “Does he look like a guard?”

  “Well… he’s ugly! Denaos told us to look out for the ugly ones.”

  “You can’t just dent a tray on a man’s skull for no good reason.”

  Kataria opened her mouth to retort but steadied herself with a deep breath. “I thought you were in trouble,” she said softly, “and if you disagree that that’s reason enough, there’s room on this tray for two dents.”

  “That’s not…” Lenk sighed and looked to Mocca, who shrugged helplessly in return. “Yeah. Thanks.” He glanced down at Sheffu. “Is he dead?”

  “Look at him breathing. He’s fine.” A small droplet of blood pooled upon the floor from beneath Sheffu’s veil. “Mostly fine.” Another one followed. “Look, maybe we’d just better move him before he’s even less fine.”

  “Right, right. You get the legs. I’ll take the—”

  “Shkainai! Stop!”

  They looked up. At the end of the hall, several swords were being drawn and several pairs of boots were thundering across the marble floor.

  And they were running.

  True, Lenk felt bad about abandoning Sheffu. He felt slightly worse when Mocca fell behind. But as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw the guards rushing past the white-clad man, ignoring him in favor of more spirited quarry.

  Lenk had about as much energy for confusion as he did for sorrow. Everything was concentrated on the cold marble beneath him and the ostentatious hall around him. He turned down a corridor, then another, then another.

  He was lost in opulence, every gilded door and silk-spun hall looking the same. He wasn’t even sure how far he had come or where he had turned or whether Kataria—

  Kataria.

  Had he lost her? He couldn’t hear her next to him. He couldn’t—

  Wait. A dark shape appeared in the corner of his eye, rushing to catch up with him. He breathed a sigh of relief as it came closer, toward him, at him.

  That sigh of relief exploded in a great burst of air as the house guard came careering around the corner and tackled him at the waist. He fell to the ground in a heap, skidding along the marble with the weight of armor bearing down upon him.

  Breathlessness did not mean senselessness, however. He jerked his elbow back behind him and caught the guard’s jaw. He twisted his hand across his body in a shot to the kidneys, finding a gap beneath the man’s breastplate and driving a fist into it. With a deep breath and a sudden spasm, he hurled the man off his back and rolled up to a sitting position.

  Where he was promptly met with a boot to the chest.

  The kick drove him back to the ground, just in time to find another leather-covered toe jamming into his ribs. Breath became a distant dream, not even enough to groan as he rolled onto his stomach, attempting to curl into a protective ball.

  As it turned out, it was hard to protect oneself from several more boots stomping simultaneously. He felt them strike his back, his arms, and his legs. None of them were quite so bad as the one that struck his temple, though, causing his head to crack against the floor.

  His vision faded. Everything felt cold, even the hands grabbing him by the arms and hauling him up. The last thing he saw before a halo of darkness swallowed his sight was a dark red drop of blood dripping from his brow into his eye.

  By the time she saw that she was alone, she didn’t dare call out for him.

  Somehow, she had lost the guards. She didn’t know how. Most of them went after Lenk when they turned different ways down that one corridor, but two had followed her and… and…

  Now Kataria was alone.

  She tried to catch her breath, looking down the hall she had just come from. Her ears pricked up, twitching left and right, searching for a sound. No boots, no armor, no warning shouts. No bare feet, no hard breathing, no calls for help.

  No guards.

  No Lenk.

  Nobody.

  Maybe the silk covering the walls smothered his sound. Or maybe he was already dead.

  She should go back, she knew. She should call out for him.

  No, she told herself. They’d hear you first. There are more of them than there are of him. Just go back and… I don’t know, listen for him? Yeah. You know the sound of his breath. You know the sound of his feet. You can go back down the hall quietly and wait until you can hear… you can hear…

  She was distracted. She shook her head; her ears twitched like a cat’s. It didn’t help.

  She could hear something.

  What was that, she wondered? Something faint, like a fly, buzzing right beside her ear? No; more like a heartbeat, felt through someone else’s chest. Or maybe the sound of a song heard through many soft trees and many stiff breezes and many, many miles.

  It grew louder with each breath, shrieking, roaring, screaming. She couldn’t hear anything else. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t—

  She felt someone rise up behind her. An arm went around her neck. She snarled, reached up to seize it, and made no move beyond that. The tip of a dagger pointed beneath her chin was enough to discourage it.

  “Move, you die,” a voice threatened in her ear. “Do what I say, though…” The steel kissed the tender flesh beneath her jaw. “You just might live. Understand?”

  She nodded as much as the blade allowed. Fear raced through her, demanded she struggle. Nerve steadied her, though, as she was all too aware of the metal scraping against her skin.

  “Good,” the voice purred. “Now, answer me this.” A hot breath blew against the tip of her ear. “What happened to your last shirt?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “That little green thing. I liked that one.”

  Her brows furrowed. “What?”

  “This black thing here kind of smells. Couldn’t you cut the middle out of it or something?”

  Kataria broke free in a flail of slapping hands. The knife fell away from her chin almost immediately, a morbid chuckle following it.

  When she turned around, a wooden face greeted her, a broad, impish grin and a pair of eyes like upside-down crescent moons carved into it. Even if she didn’t see the braided, feathered hair or the long, pointed ears, she would have known who stood before her by the chuckle alone.

  Kataria narrowed her eyes at Kwar. “That,” she growled, “was not funny.”

  Kwar pulled her mask up. Somehow, the wink she offered somehow more unsettling than the half-moon eyes of her mask.

  “You liked it.”

  “Because who wouldn’t like having a knife jammed up under their chin?” Kataria snarled. “It’s not as if this place is crawling with people trying to kill me, after all.”

  “All right, all right, fussy-ears, I’m sorry,” Kwar said, laughing. “To be honest, I didn’t think I could actually sneak up on you.” She pointed to her ears, twitching attentively. “Didn’t you hear us?”

  She had heard her, Kataria realized. That buzzing in
her ear, that beating heart, that distant song; had that all been Kwar? It had been so loud, so much so that it had consumed every other sound around her.

  Kwar’s Howling.

  A language meant only for her.

  For a moment, Kataria found herself breathless at the memory. Though still not enough to miss the word Kwar spoke.

  “Who’s ‘us’?”

  The question was answered a moment later as two dark shapes came trundling out from around the corner, dragging something behind them. She recognized the other shicts almost immediately, and not just by their grinning masks or their pointed ears. She could hear their Howling, as well, but theirs was fainter than Kwar’s, distracted and meant for other ears.

  She might have been more worried about that if she hadn’t recognized the two shapes they were dragging behind them. Maybe they weren’t the humans that had been chasing her, but they were house guards, and they were quite dead. Their cloaks were laid out behind them like blankets to keep the blood from their slashed throats from weeping out onto the floor.

  The two shicts dropped their burdens next to a window, pushing its blinds open. Absently, their ears twitched, hearing her unspoken Howling. They looked up at Kataria through their grinning masks and waved with a decidedly unnerving air of nonchalance.

  “Good evening, sister,” one of them called as he grabbed the ankles of one of the guards.

  “Glad you found us,” the other, taking the guard’s arms, added. “We’d been calling for you.”

  “Sorry,” Kataria said, watching with morbid fascination as they dumped one and then the other guard out the window. “I was distracted.”

  “Apparently,” Kwar said. She reached out to take the hem of Kataria’s tunic, sniffing at the material and making a disparaging snort. “Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t understand the shicts of today. Running around in fancy houses, dressing up in smelly black burlap…”

  “It’s complicated.” Kataria slapped away her hand and smoothed her tunic out.

  And it just got more complicated now that you’re here.

  Kataria resisted the urge to say that. And at that moment, she regretted even thinking it. Kwar fixed a steady stare upon her, looking past the burlap, past the skin, into some other part of her entirely. And even as her eyes remained steady as stones in a riverbed, her ears twitched excitedly.

  Kataria grew tense under her gaze. She was ready to run, if necessary. She was ready to come up with some half-assed excuse for her presence, if necessary. But Kwar’s stare betrayed no action; Kwar’s ears betrayed no discovery on her part.

  Hence, when the khoshict burst out laughing, Kataria nearly jumped.

  “Fine, then,” Kwar said. “Be all mysterious and secretive. I’ll find out later.” Her grin curled into an impish v. “I always find out.”

  “What are you doing here, then?” Kataria asked. “Or is that a secret, too?”

  “Not at all. Everyone is welcome on a hunt!”

  “And… who are you hunting?”

  “Oh, you know.” Kwar’s lips split apart and her canines glistened in the lantern light of the hall. “Prey.”

  Kataria cast a sidelong glance at her. “And is Thua with you?”

  Instantly, the smile faded. “Thua doesn’t need to know about this.”

  Kataria did not ask. For at that moment, her ears caught a sound. The patter of feet on marble, a sharp gasp of air, an unsteady breath that accompanied the hair standing up on the back of one’s neck. She saw by the upright ears around her that the khoshicts had heard it as well.

  “Ah,” Kwar said softly. “And there it is now.”

  Her ears twitched and her companions responded to the unheard command, crouching near the corner of the hallway. She looked at Kataria and grinned.

  “Coming?”

  Kataria froze. She knew that she ought to refuse, that she had already wasted enough time that she should use searching for Lenk. But what would she say to Kwar?

  Sorry, I have to go back and find a human that you probably really would hate and also I’m sleeping with him; hope that doesn’t bother you or your friends here? If you end up finding him, would you please come get me and, you know, not kill him?

  If Kwar heard that, she didn’t say anything.

  “Right behind you,” Kataria whispered.

  This made sense, she told herself as she followed the khoshicts to the corner of the hall. Lenk could handle guards better than he could a shictish hunting party. At least if Kataria was with them, she could stop them from killing him if they found him first.

  Or she could try, anyway.

  Her ears went spear-straight as she heard the sound. Footsteps were drawing closer. Soft on the marble: shoes or barefoot. Not a guard, then. A servant, perhaps. Or even Miron. It didn’t sound like Lenk’s footsteps, but it was hard to concentrate here.

  She looked down at the dagger clutched in Kwar’s hand and tensed, ready to grab that wrist if needed.

  The footsteps were loud now, almost deafening to their sensitive ears. They tensed collectively, ready to strike. The other two shicts slipped hatchets and short, curved blades into their hands. They drew breath as one, held it as one, waited.

  Until their prey rounded the corner.

  The human woman had been frightened before she even saw them, and thus she was ready to run. She evaded the shicts’ grasping hands as they lunged at her, whirling around and sprinting down the hall she had just come from. Kwar leapt over her companions, flipping the dagger in her hand to grip it by the tip. She stood at the mouth of the hall, drew her arm back, and threw in a single fluid motion.

  A soft thud. A screech. A body hit the floor.

  And Kwar was laughing.

  “Ha!” She leapt into the air, triumphant. “Didn’t think I was going to make that, did you?” She turned to her companions, pulling her mask over her face. “Did you?”

  “Horseshit,” one of the khoshicts muttered, rising to his feet. “You got lucky.”

  “Lucky, clever, and charming,” Kwar said smugly.

  Kataria followed the khoshicts down the hall. Their prey hadn’t gotten far; she lay upon the marble, a dagger’s hilt jutting out of her left buttock. The fear in her eyes was new, but Kataria recognized the rest of the woman.

  The envoy. From the Harbor Road that morning.

  “Please,” the human gasped on the floor. “Please, don’t kill me. I have nothing. This is all the fasha’s.”

  “Ah, see, that’s where you’re wrong.” Kwar knelt down beside the woman, gently thumbing the hilt of the embedded dagger. “This is yours, human. All this land is yours. It was once ours, once, but not anymore. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.” She looked at the human thoughtfully. “Now, doesn’t that seem reason enough to kill you?”

  She pushed the hilt about with two fingers, wiggling it inside the wound. The envoy’s scream was stifled as Kwar clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears streamed down the woman’s eyes, streaking her face paint as she shrieked into Kwar’s palm.

  But even muffled as it was, Kataria could hear the scream as clearly as if it had come from her own mouth. She shook her head and made a move to step forward, but Kwar released the dagger before she could.

  “Lucky for you,” Kwar said, “I don’t care about your life tonight, only what you know. You will tell me what I want to know. This is not a request, nor a command. This is what will happen. That part is out of your hands. It may take a moment, it may take an hour. That part is up to you. Do you understand?”

  The envoy nodded a trembling head. Kwar nodded back.

  “Where is the sewer access?” she asked.

  “Down… downstairs,” the envoy replied. “In the basement.” Kwar’s mask betrayed no emotion. The woman drew in a sharp gasp. “I… I can show you.”

  Kwar nodded. She slipped a small piece of leather into the woman’s mouth. “Bite down. This will hurt.”

  The envoy shrieked into the leather as Kwar pulled the
dagger free and wiped it clean on her skirt. The wound bled a little, Kataria saw, but didn’t gush. The envoy looked up at her, the only unmasked shict, with a glistening plea in her eyes.

  No recognition at all.

  Kwar grunted at one of her companions. He swept forward and plucked up the envoy, slinging her over his shoulder. She stared at the envoy through the slits in her mask.

  “Any noise aside from direction, things go bad,” she warned.

  The envoy nodded weakly. And they were off.

  They went quietly down the halls, removing the leather from the envoy’s mouth long enough to get directions, navigating their way to a second set of servants’ stairs tucked away in a tiny corner at the rear of the house.

  Guards rambled about, unaware of their passing. Before any of them ever heard the sound of tramping boots, Kwar was there with ears and hand up, signaling a halt. Before any of them could react, Kwar’s dagger was out, ready for blood.

  And, more than once, Kataria looked at her carefully and wondered who this woman moving like a shadow was.

  Where was the coy, playful khoshict that she had awoken to find sitting atop her? Where was the laughing, capricious woman who danced around the fire with her? Where was her impish smile, her glittering eyes, her laugh?

  This woman was a stranger, her movements were careful and precise instead of carefree and easy. This woman’s stare was cold instead of warm. This woman moved less like a woman and more like a predator, alive only in the hunt.

  And Kataria was not the only one to see it.

  In those moments that the envoy dared to look up, her gaze was split between Kwar and Kataria. The fear in her eyes was ever-present, though there was only a bright, glistening desperation when she looked to Kataria. A wordless plea that babbled down her face in shining tears that she didn’t dare show Kwar.

  And, at that moment, Kataria could understand why.

  Regardless, she followed Kwar and the other two khoshicts down the stairs. They avoided the rush of servants to and fro and slipped past stray guards and guests to another set of stairs leading to the basement.

  Even Ghoukha’s cellar was magnificent, its narrow brick tunnels well polished, its many, many larder doors well oiled. Almost too well oiled—the pungent reek of grease was everywhere. They must be close to an oil store, she reasoned, and quite a bit of it.